Ten Lessons Of The Iraq War
By David Krieger
5-7-3

There are always lessons to be learned after a war. Often governments and pundits focus only on lessons having to do with military strategies and tactics, such as troop deployments, engagement in battles, bombing targets and the effectiveness of different weapons systems. There are, of course, far bigger lessons to be learned, and here are some of the principal ones from the Iraq War.
 
1. In the eyes of the Bush administration, the relevance of international organizations such as the United Nations depends primarily upon their willingness to rubberstamp US policy, legal or illegal, moral or immoral.
 
2. The Bush Doctrine of Preemptive War may be employed against threats that have no basis in fact. 
 
3. The American people appear to take little notice of the ãbait and switchä tactic of initiating a war to prevent use of weapons of mass destruction and then celebrating regime change when no such weapons are found.
 
4. A country that spends $400 billion a year on its military, providing them with the latest in high-tech weaponry, can achieve clear military victory over a country that spends 1/400th of that amount and possesses virtually no high-tech weaponry.
 
5. Embedding journalists with troops leads to reporters providing only perspectives sanctioned by the military in their reports to the public. It is analogous to the imprinting of ducklings.  
 
6. The American people can be easily manipulated, with the help of both embedded and non-embedded media, to support an illegal war.
 
7. An imperial presidency does not require Congress to exercise its Constitutional authority to declare war; it requires only a compliant Congress to provide increasingly large sums of money for foreign wars.
 
8. It is far easier to destroy a dictatorial regime by military might than it is to rebuild a country as a functioning democracy. 
 
9. If other countries wish to avoid the fate of Saddam Hussein and Iraq, they better develop strong arsenals of weapons of mass destruction for protection against potential US aggression.
 
10. In all wars it is the innocent who suffer most. Thus, Saddam Hussein remains unaccounted for and George Bush stages a jet flight to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, while Ali Ismaeel Abbas lies in a hospital bed without his parents and brother, who were killed in a US attack, and without his arms. 
 
The most important lessons of the Iraq War may be as yet unrevealed, but there is a sense that American unilateralism is likely to continue to alienate important allies, while the triumphalism of the Bush administration is likely to taunt terrorists, making them more numerous and tenacious in their commitment to violent retaliation.
 
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). 
 
"If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing;
If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself."
--- Lao Tzu
 
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
--- US Constitution, First Amendment
 
"Peace is the only battle worth waging."
--- Albert Camus
 
To become a free on-line participating member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation,
click here: https://www.ndic.com/wagingpeace/supportus.htm
 
David Krieger, President
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
PMB 121, 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 1
Santa Barbara, CA 93108-2794
dkrieger@napf.org
http://www.wagingpeace.org
http://www.nuclearfiles.org

"How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the earth were it not for misgovernment and a diversion of his energies to selfish interests."
--Thomas Jefferson

Rebuttal Time.

In the interest of space I have answered the points without reproducing them.


1. In the eyes of the Bush Administration, when an international body passes resolutions with specific consequences those consequences should be enforced. To make a threat and then fail to deliver on it is the most dangerous of follies. We will not allow the safety and security of the United States to be held for ransom by countries that are aiding and abetting those who threaten us.

2. The Bush Doctrine has been used against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the Ba’athist regime in Iraq. Two for two. Not bad.

3. The President made it clear dozens of times before the invasion that we were seeking ‘regime change’ in Iraq, and that even if Iraq was to disarm we were still going to remove its ruling clique. No bait and switch here. Furthermore, your impatience concerning the discovery of WMD’s is unseemly. Didn’t you support Hans Blix’ team being given another six months time to inspect?

4. Tell that to Russia vis-à-vis Afghanistan. Tell that to the United States vis-à-vis Vietnam. Would you like more examples?

5. What a crock. If the military had denied access to the media you would have screamed ‘censorship’. But the military did provide access, so you scream ‘censorship’. We must assume you did so since you already had that word unpacked, and didn’t want it to spoil.

6. Kindly demonstrate how the war was ‘illegal’ – please provide what statute has been violated and which court would have jurisdiction. I’ll wait.

7. A formal declaration of war hasn’t been sought by the Executive nor granted by the Congress since 1941. In case you haven’t been paying attention, a lot of military activity has occurred during this time.


8. Really? For who? The effort to overthrow Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy was quite difficult. It cost over 300,000 American lives. The rebuilding of these countries into the successful functioning democracies that they are today was expensive, but I doubt that veterans of WWII would say the rebuilding was more difficult than the war which preceded it.


9. Actually, the doctrine has done much to encourage nations to come to terms with the United States. Syria, Iran, and North Korea are all clamoring to appease us now.


10. The fact that Saddam Hussein is unaccounted for is a source of great joy for 24 million Iraqis. It was much worse for them when they knew exactly where he was. If he is alive, he’ll stay hidden – if he can.
What exactly does the President’s trip to the USS Abraham Lincoln have to do with anything?
Ali Ismaeel Abbas’ condition is a tragedy. But the suffering of a single boy cannot be weighed against the liberation of 24 million people. There were millions of innocents killed in Germany in the Second World War. I don’t suppose you would prefer we left the Nazi state alone – in the interest of protecting innocent life.

I saved some of my bathwater for you to drink.

Way to go, "George W. Bush". Whenever we Leftist bedwetters don't have anything intelligent to say, we can always resort to childish attempts at humor. Great job!

Now this IDIOT thinks he's a leftist.

All of you seem pretty satisfied of how you spend your time. You write long senseless opinions on what you "think." Well, here's an idea-- go out into the world and do something to make a difference instead of whining and complaining. I look at this site as entertainment only, not for informational purposes. If you are here to be informed, you should realize that you have made a great mistake. This site is loaded with so much political rhetoric that it is very ironic that they name it "Indymedia." In other words, this is a liberal Democrats playground. This is also a site that can extend the ideas of marxism/leninism into the vulnerable minds of the uneducated working class. As for myself, I am pro-WAR all the way. I do not care if no WMD is found, or if Saddam is alive. What I care most about is human life all over the world. We went into Iraq with the goal to eliminate WMD from the hands of a murderous dictator who has tortured, killed, gassed, threatened millions of people. If removing him from power is not the right thing to do then fighting NAZI aggression in WWII was the wrong thing to do! America is not your enemy, neither is GW Bush, your eductaion level is your own enemy. If you are not properly informed than I can understand why you would formulate such bad viewpoints. Don't be afraid of Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC because all news is biased. The information that you get from Indymedia is the most biased of them all. The corporate media is only guilty of being pro-Democratic/American. This happens because they happen to be American News stations. I know that many of you will reply to this in frustration, delivering a bombardment of insults and historical references; what you won't have is any kind of defense to my comments. Most of you who disagree with me will say that I am somehow the victim of the misinformation of the mass media, the government conspiracy theory, or that I suffer from a lack of education. I will ignore any and all of those responses, but I welcome an intelligent defense to your position.

...Marxist/Leninist Playground how do you explain the Libertarians and Anarchists who frequent this board?

In the realm of ideas and opinion we aren't exactly rolling over and playing dead.

"We went into Iraq with the goal to eliminate WMD from the hands of a murderous dictator who has tortured, killed, gassed, threatened millions of people."

Saddam was my best puppet up until 1990. Only then did I begin to "care" about the Iraqi people. I looked the other way at the Halabja gassing. He was our ALLY, then.

Sorry, I'm much too simpleminede to understand your post. I am a warmongering conservative.

Sorry, I'm much too simpleminded to understand your post. I am a warmongering conservative.

"Leading evangelical Christians for the first time have publicly condemned assaults on Islam by the Rev. Franklin Graham and other fellow religious conservatives and pledged to heal rifts with Muslims that threaten missionary work overseas," the Associated Press reports:

The evangelicals said that the derisive comments endangered Christians working in the Muslim world, strained already tense interfaith relations and fed the perception in the Mideast and beyond that the war on terrorism is a Christian crusade against Islam. . . .

Clive Calver, president of World Relief, the humanitarian aid arm of the evangelical association, said all the statements have "placed lives and livelihoods at risk" overseas, where missionaries have become targets of Muslim extremists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29534-2003May8.html

Islam is a religion of peace, and if you dare suggest otherwise, Muslims will kill some of your corelgionists to make the point.

I'd like to kill a Muslim for Jesus. If you're a cyberterrorist who hates Muslims, please visit my website.

www.kobehq.com

That crap is old. And boring. And those guys are getting like 100000 hits per day thanks to idiots like you. You're helping them.

I AM one of them, you idiot.

Robert Byrd, Henry Waxman and sundry other Democrats have been in a snit all week over President Bush's speech last week on the deck of the USS Lincoln. The commander in chief, they say, has no business addressing the troops he commands, and the Dems are shocked, shocked to find politics going on.

So will Byrd and Waxman launch an investigation of Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Gov. Gary Locke? The gentleladies from Washington state and their governor, Democrats all, visited the Lincoln earlier this week when it returned to its home port of Everett, Wash. Cantwell's Web site even has photos of the senator hanging out with sailors.

Don't get me wrong. *I* don't fault Murray, Cantwell or Locke. Indeed, I especially welcome such a show of patriotism from Murray, who voted against war in Iraq and last year made boneheaded comments about Osama bin Laden's humanitarianism.

Yeah, I think it's great that we taxpayers footed the bill for that $1million publicity stunt of Bush's. Great job!

You're website sux. I checked it out. It's boring as all f*ck. You guys are preoccupied with some idiot named Steven Devoy. You're all side-tracked. No one gives two squirts.

If you wanna have some fun, come here and make fun of the liberals like I do. It's more fun shaving your girfriend's squirrel and getting out the mayonaise!

Yeah, I also like making fun of people who are smarter than me.

you should just go back to the kobe forum. The people around here are idiots.

My what a sorry state the Left is in these days. Mere weeks after an asswhuppin, and they are all in disarray.

Aw, It'll be ok, little Lefty. We won't punish you for your traitorous and seditious speech. We don't take you seriously. You're just a foolish child.

Sen. Robert Byrd is in a snit over President Bush's speech last week on the USS Lincoln, CNN reports. "President Bush's address to the American people announcing combat victory in Iraq deserved to be marked with solemnity, not extravagance; with gratitude to God, not self-congratulatory gestures," Byrd said in a Senate floor speech Tuesday. "American blood has been shed on foreign soil in defense of the president's policies. This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/05/06/byrd.bush/index.html

Byrd adds: "I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech." Actually, Bush wore a suit and tie for his speech, though he donned a flight jacket for his landing on the deck of the Lincoln. Bush has come in for some criticism over his "top gun" act--former Enron adviser Paul Krugman asserted Tuesday that "American presidents traditionally make a point of avoiding military affectations." But blogger Donald Luskin quickly came up with a photo of President Clinton that disproves Krugman's assertion, and of course everyone remembers Michael Dukakis riding around in that tank. Nah, what really steams guys like Byrd and Krugman is that Bush--who after all served in the Air National Guard--looks so good in the flight jacket.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/06/opinion/06KRUG.html

http://www.poorandstupid.com/2003_05_04_chronArchive.asp#200247655

Here's another Byrd quote: "As I watched the president's fighter jet swoop down onto the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, I could not help but contrast the reported simple dignity of President Lincoln at Gettysburg with the flamboyant showmanship of President Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln."

I actually saw Byrd say this on TV, and I could not help but contrast the West Virginia windbag's flamboyance with the reported simple dignity of Abraham Lincoln, whose Gettysburg Address was not even televised.

I'm more of a conservative than you, you twit. Try thinking with your head and not your ass.

Yeah, I think it's GREAT that we taxpayers footed the bill for that $1 million photo op for Bush. Great job!

My third grade buddy just informed me that I'm the only idiot here.

And I failed to mention how GREAT it was we had to foot the bill for Clintons million doallar photo-ops, too. Great Job!

>$1 million photo op

$1,000,000 divided by 280,000,000 American citizens equals $0.0035714

Anyone still upset, send a stamped, self addressed envelope to:

Bush Photo-Op Reimbursements
POB 777
Washington, D.C. 10023

I will personally pay you back.

Other than that, shut your fucking pie hole.

Whoops! I just realized that children don't pay taxes. I will shut my fucking pie hole now.

>Whoops! I just realized that children don't pay taxes.

Unsubstantiated Allegation

For more about logic, see:

http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/nonsup.htm

I love the idea of getting closure on the Clinton impeachment.

The guy was such a sad and sorry excuse for a President. His name will forever scar the office of the Presidency.

So if we have a big enough Republican majority in the Senate, can we revisit impeachment and impeach the sorry son of a bitch after he's out of office?

I hope so. It would be good for the country to do that.

"The guy was such a sad and sorry excuse for a President."

Unsubstantiated Allegation

For more about logic, see:

http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/nonsup.htm

fooled ya.

You couldn't fool a child, you moron.

I AM a child, you poopeyhead!

I'm mentally unstable.